Critical Mass

by Whitley Strieber

  Vladimir went into the old communications shack, with its walls lined with ancient, useless radio equipment. To evade American detection, Aziz’s operation used manually delivered messages now. The mules were their shortwave radios, and piggybacked number stations. The fezzes actually believed that the Russian operators knew nothing of the fact that they were using the number stations. Absurd, of course.

  “Hello, Vladimir.”

  The prick against the back of his neck told him everything he needed to know. “I hope it’s sharp,” he said to Aziz.

  “It’s dull as stone, Vladi. Your sort of a knife.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  Then there came a sharp, echoing cry. The surprise—no, astonishment—in Alexei’s voice was unmistakable.

  There was movement behind Vladimir, and then he was shoved into the small communications room by two figures in full purdah. Women? No way to tell. One of them had what looked like an antique Arab dagger, curved to tear out guts. The other had Alexei’s pistol. They were followed by a boy with a meat cleaver. Aziz stood in the concrete hallway behind them.

  “We’ve been waiting for you,” a familiar voice said.

  “A double agent, then, Eshan?”

  “You always underestimate us, you Russians. You cannot accept our abilities.”

  Aziz came in. He nodded toward Alexei. “That man was here to cut your head off, boy. Kneel down, Alexei; young Wasim here is going to cut your head off instead.”

  Alexei cried out, then stifled it.

  “What? You were going to cut his head off? But he can’t do the same? Why, because he’s only a stupid fez?” Aziz took a step toward Alexei. “You helped us. Useful Russians. But it’s finished, the bombs are there, so you don’t matter anymore.”

  Alexei grinned—a thin, pitiful attempt. “I can pay.” He shook like a palsy victim, and Vladimir was embarrassed for him, and for Russia.

  “Alexei, face it. We’ve been betrayed and we’re dead,” Vladimir said. “You might as well do as he says.” Himself, he felt only a dull, empty hopelessness. He’d been at this most of his career, assembling and transmitting the thousands of tiny packages that had been sent to the hidden stations around the world. It had taken eleven years of work to get the bombs in place, moving them bit by bit, then getting the Islamist fools to assemble them correctly, these men who did not know a motor from an engine.

  “Wait,” Alexei yammered. “Eshan, Wasim, and you women—listen to this! Yes, listen! There’s a reward—many rewards—for him! Yes, for Aziz! The Americans, ten million, the Syrians, two million—dollars, yes, listen! The Pakis, two million—oh, a long list! You can betray him and be rich. Rich!”

  One of the women knocked Alexei in the shoulder with an empty butane tank she had been carrying as a weapon. Squalling, he lurched away from the figure, whereupon Eshan tripped him, and he went down groveling like a whipped cur.

  Vladimir simply waited to die. He didn’t care anymore. This operation had gone out of control. It would not be recovered. The group grabbed Alexei’s arms. They pushed him to his knees.

  Aziz said to the boy, “Chop at it, at the back of it. Let him scream; they’re holding him.”

  While Alexei screamed and twisted his head, the little fellow took a gingerly chop at his neck. The touch of the blade caused Alexei to bob his head almost comically. Vladimir was reminded of a chicken. How banal, for this to be among his last thoughts, Alexei the pecking hen. Shouldn’t he contemplate Pushkin or “O God, our help and aid in distress . . .”? But it was a long prayer; he’d best come up with a shorter one. The Dinner Prayer, perhaps. Could he recall the damned thing?

  Again the boy hacked and Alexei squalled. How afraid he was, old roast-hands, who would have strangled this pretty boy slowly, just to watch his eyes fade.

  Aziz shouted, “This is a Crusader devil; do it!”

  The boy, weeping, muttered something in Persian. Aziz snapped at him, and the boy hacked at Alexei harder, the cleaver now making a sound like a butcher’s off-center chop. Blood spurted and Alexei stomped and babbled some sort of slurred plea. He was losing blood fast. Consciousness was going.

  But that poor child, dear heaven, what a thing to make an innocent kid do! “The boy will not forget this,” Vladimir shouted. “Never! Aziz, it’s wrong to do this to him!”

  “To the Muslims, execution is not extraordinary.”

  “There soon will be no Muslims.”

  “The Muslims have won the world.”

  “Have you any knowledge of Dream Angel?”

  “They will not execute Dream Angel, Vladimir. They will choose to live as slaves.”

  The boy stood trembling.

  “Do it, boy! Do it!”

  The kid’s big eyes bulged, his face shone with sweat, and he chopped and chopped. Like great, swaying birds, the women in their black burkas hovered nearby, their arms sweeping in their distress like impotent wings.

  Alexei’s screams became sucking hisses, and then the boy lifted his head by the hair. “It’s heavy,” the boy cried.

  “Then put it down,” Aziz replied mildly.

  “This is not a lesson I was sent to learn!”

  “ ‘As for those who disbelieve, we enter them into the fire and often, so that their skins are terrible with fire. Then we will change them for other skins, that they may taste the pain of it again.’ ” He took the boy by his collar and raised him eye to eye. “Which sura, boy?”

  The boy stared right back at him. “Four. Fifty-six.”

  He threw the boy to the floor. “Now, Vladimir, you have some work to do for me. There must be a signal, to be sent when you succeed. I want you to send that signal.”

  “Fine. I don’t care.” He gave no sign to Aziz that he was mistaken. No signal was to be sent. The least flicker of radio transmission out of this place and the Americans would be here within the hour. So, let them come.

  “What is it, then? Not a radio signal, surely.”

  “Of course it is.”

  There was a flash in Vladimir’s face, and a terrific blast of pain. For a moment, he was confused, his mind questing for some understanding. Then he realized that he’d been slapped with a gun butt. He had not the slightest intention of being tortured. “Here’s the truth: If I don’t return to the forward base at the appointed time, then a radio signal is sent. It will appear to be from you. It is intended to draw the Americans. There are rangers waiting on top of this structure. They have a transmitter.”

  Aziz had known Vladimir for eleven years. He had first met with Vladimir when he was a spy in Chechnya, had lived with him in Moscow, had slept with him on drunken nights when they were hunting bear in Siberia and the two of them were in a tent in the depths of the taiga, and—it had simply happened. It was nothing, a matter between men. Nothing sinful.

  Well, never mind. Vladimir must now die.

  It was also necessary to abandon this place, given that the Americans might indeed be somehow alerted. Very well, they would return to Peshawar. It was past time, for there was political work necessary. Hezbollah had condemned him. Syria, Iran, even the Taliban were uniform in rejecting this messiah of whom they knew nothing. Hamas, of course, those running dogs of the Jewish state.

  “Do you know, Vladimir, that we have a weapon in Moscow?”

  “You do not.”

  “Do you want to find out?”

  “What code are you using?”

  “Purple.”

  “You’re lying!”

  “Why should I be lying when the president, in his very office not three hours ago, said to launch Dream Angel. But wait, he said.”

  “Dream Angel is going to its fail-safe points?”

  “So I have been told by a simple man with a very bad truck, who drove along your terrible Soviet road with a certain message. Here, I have a photo.” He showed Vladimir a picture of the Kama 3 of old Hassan, with the names of certain djinn written on the door. It was the order of the names that revealed the information.r />
  “I can’t read that. Is it Pashto?”

  “Dari, Pashto? What does it matter, some stupid writing of us fezzes?”

  “You’ve conquered the world, haven’t you?”

  “Allah has.” Then he took the knife from Wasim, and raised it to Vladimir’s throat.

  Vladimir looked into Aziz’s eyes. “Old times,” Vladimir said.

  Around them, the women, Eshan, Wasim, all became still. “There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his prophet,” said Aziz. “You know, the Americans are on their way to this place already, aren’t they?” He smiled a little. “They have followed him. He has let them.”

  “Aziz, no, I despise the Americans! Despise them!”

  “You were in the pay of the CIA.”

  “As were you!”

  Aziz laughed at him. “But I ate the money.”

  “Please, I can be of use. Yes, I’m a whore. But of course! Yours, now, Aziz.”

  “Putin’s, the CIA’s, mine. Who knows who would be next? Nasrallah, perhaps? With Hezbollah singing the song of the Crusaders, why not?”

  “The world hates you. The Muslims are all against you. Al-Zawahiri has condemned you!”

  “Certainly. Al-Zawahiri is like Nasrallah. His whereabouts are known to the Crusaders. So he is nothing but their slave.”

  “I can be of use!”

  Aziz gave the knife to Eshan and turned away. “The Americans will be here soon,” Aziz told him. “This man works for them. We must go at once.” He hurried off down the low concrete corridor.

  Behind him, there was the sound of the throat being expertly slit, a noise like water spattering. Aziz hesitated for a moment but did not turn back. He heard the thud of Vladimir’s collapse, and the drumming of his feet. When the bubbling of the breath faded, Aziz walked on. He had work to do, and very quickly.

  His first wife, Zaaria, threw the gas cylinder she had carried off to one side. “Why are the Muslims against you?”

  “No Muslims are against me. Only apostates.”

  “And all these millions on your head, Aziz? What is this?”

  “A Russian lie.”

  She looked at him, her eyes dark in her concealing hijab.

  “We leave at first light! Prepare everybody!”

  “We go to Peshawar?”

  “We go where God sends us.”

  She hurried off toward the women’s chamber.

  21

  ONLY A DREAM

  In Alexandria, Virginia, “Ronald Alfred Mullins” and his younger brother worked in their garage. Ronald, whose real name was Bilal Aboud, had the plan in his hands. “The circular valve is to be turned twice,” he said to Hani.

  “And then does it explode?”

  “It does not explode. Turn the valve, Hani.” During the night, Bilal had heard Hani weeping. He had seen Hani go to the kitchen and eat peanut butter from the jar, and had heard his smacking. He must not weigh more than 128 pounds or the plane could not fly, and for that he had needed to starve himself for nearly a month. His Ramadan fast had never ended.

  Of the two of them, only Bilal knew what the word “purple” that had appeared in the craigslist advert meant. When he had been counseled by the psychiatrist about how to ensure that Hani would indeed carry out his mission, it had been explained to Bilal that anticipation was the worst thing. So he had not told Hani when the flight would take place. However, they had to be in readiness, and so had to install the bomb into the airframe.

  Hani had also been carefully trained. He knew not to ask, knew that he did not want to know: “The only thing that matters, Hani, is what you are doing right now.” So Hani had trained like that, concentrating only on the momentary activity. He would think of getting the plane off the ground, then of the four-minute flight to his ascension point, then of pulling back the stick. He would not think of his death, never that, never at all. He was not a simple creature; he had his own ideas of heaven and afterlife. In truth, he did not think he had an afterlife. Hoped he didn’t, because what he was going to do was so extremely evil. But he had his brothers’ and sisters’ lives to consider, and the honor of his family. Their father, he believed, had been shot dead by Blackwaters in Baghdad. He had been an electrical engineer driving to his work. He was not a fighter of any kind at all. He had been shot, Hani had been told, for sport. People said that he had pleaded, but the Blackwaters had shot him, then shared cigarettes among themselves. Perhaps he had been killed by American mercenaries . . . or perhaps by somebody seeking to radicalize the two English-speaking brothers. In any case, Hani fought for honor, not for access to a heaven he did not believe was even there. For him, America was Blackwater.

  “Now, this is the bomb?”

  “This is the bomb.”

  “There’s a lot of wiring. It looks delicate.”

  “It only needs to work once.”

  “Will the radiation kill us?”

  “Not as long as the plutonium is properly contained.”

  Hani laid a hand on it. “Cold,” he said.

  “You can’t feel the power of it.”

  The two of them lifted the black melon by its handles, moving it into the flimsy aircraft.

  “It’s not easy! Careful!”

  It was not supposed to exist, this bomb weighing only two hundred pounds. But it did, did it not, and there were many more of them, Bilal hoped. The new land mines was how Bilal thought of them.

  It dropped down into the compartment they had welded together with such effort, struggling with modifications to the kit. But this was satisfying. It was stable in its position now.

  “Now, the wings,” Hani said.

  They had to fix the wings to the body of the aircraft, which must be done in the street. It could not be done here; there wasn’t enough space. “It is not time,” Bilal said.

  Hani smiled. “Time is only a dream. As is this life, also nothing but a dream.”

  Bilal laid a hand on his brother’s shoulder. “Allah has no need of time. In heaven eternal, there is no time.”

  “Do you believe it, Bilal?”

  Bilal did not like this question. He himself couldn’t fly the plane; he was too heavy. In the training camp in Texas, he had been taught that when a pilot asked when he must fly that was a danger sign. “I believe that the world the Crusaders have made is evil,” Bilal said. “The nation that murdered Dad for sport is evil.”

  Hani nodded. “We’ve never been able to train with the wings. Do you think we’ll get them to work?”

  “If God wills.” The wings had been modified to fold back, and would need to be carefully opened and locked, once the plane was out in the street. That would be the most dangerous moment.

  “Bilal, I’m—”

  “We are all afraid. It’s natural.”

  Hani smiled again. In it Bilal saw a new fragility, and he thought that Hani was failing in his resolve.

  “I was going to say I’m hungry. I want some lunch.”

  Bilal put his hand on his brother’s narrow shoulder. They went to the kitchen together.

  22

  A ROOM OF ONE’S OWN

  Rashid’s space was tiny and stuffy and deep, so crammed with equipment that it was almost impossible for him to move from his chair. Rashid hated the claustrophobic hole. He had not even wanted to come in during drills. But now he must live here, in a tiny two-man bunk with another controller. He was the only Muslim among them, of course. The token.

  He did not dislike his coworkers. In fact, very much the opposite. Their dedication to the service was admirable. They were not Muslim because they did not understand, not because they had rejected the faith. They were not like his sister, foolish creature, with her apostasies. Why not bow before the word of God, proud woman?

  Even though she had accepted the faith and prayed—actually prayed—she had her demonic justifications for not even so much as wearing the veil, except when she pleased. Immodest creature, self-willed sinner!

  Her arrogance was why he had suggeste
d that the first demand be the veil. She had ignored it. Had she not, perhaps he would have also suggested that the bomb be detonated in the wilderness, not over Las Vegas. He would have accepted the danger of making such a suggestion to the powers. So it was her, Nabila. She had killed Las Vegas, and before he was through with her he would make certain she understood that the bombing there was on her head. Once this was over and power properly consolidated, it would be his faithful pleasure to execute her with his own hands.